I went to look at the website for Grace Community Church tonight after considering whether I wanted to blog my synopsis of the Live Stream sermon I watched Sunday morning, presented by Pastor Steven Lawson who talked about The Ten Commandments.
After I checked the website to see what was new there, I noticed something different. A whole page dedicated to using videos and audio recordings of the church’s at the Grace To You link which has the rules to abide by in their copyrighted materials. I have never quoted anything from the sermons I’ve heard without documented sources, the links and the full credit in any of my blog posts so I hope I’ve never infringed upon their copyright laws. I tried not to anyway.
As a person holding a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, I knew the copyright infringement laws surrounding a person’s original content. You cannot borrow a person’s content or use their words of five words in a row or more, without providing full credit to the original writer or speaker. That is known as plagiarism and is a big no-no in academics, journalism, writing books or in any form of media production, really. You can get sued for doing that. It is a person’s intellectual property and that’s what’s wrong with many people producing videos where they copy a whole video, upload it as theirs, never giving full credit or even gaining permission from the original producer of that content.
A few pastors comes to mind who have said that they have one online channel only and that they are having their material stolen so that someone else can gain views and earn income from their stolen content. They never ask permission, and I think that is just wrong.
I hope when I have a book published that no one copies my material. There is always a new perspective and ways to express oneself without copying someone’s writing or videos. I can be blessed by someone else’s content and not copy it. We are all God’s and our expressiveness should be unique.
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